Nothing Is Ever Simple
by ThickerThanLove
Summary: Originally written as Prize Fanfiction for Felhesznelenev. When breaking up an arms' deal goes bad, Mikey is taken and Raphael is on the trail of his brother's kidnappers. You don't mess with family.


A simple mission to track some arms dealing. That was all it was supposed to be.  
Mikey supposed that he should have expected things to go awry. After all, when did they EVER go right for him and his brothers? He suspected that a simple trip to gather some Chinese food for dinner would end up with blood, mayhem and torture.  
Thus, his current situation.  
Shifting his eyes upward, Mikey cursed again. He had been doing the same thing for the past hour and he still couldn't see anything. It was so damned dark in here that it had taken him a good twenty minutes to realize that he didn't even have a blindfold on. It was just…that dark here, wherever here was.  
Not that a ninja usually needed sight.  
He knew a lot about where he was. It was small, so small he couldn't stand up completely. It was not wide. He couldn't stretch out his feet completely. It smelled like wood, water and soot.  
Aside from that (which to be fair, was not a small amount of info) he was, well, blind.  
How was it that his family always got into these kinds of messes? Granted, the type of life was a given and certainly invited all kinds of things but they never seemed to catch a break. This was supposed to have been a simple, invade the warehouse, beat up the bad guys and get out mission. Not too complicated.  
But, he should have known by now that nothing was ever simple.  
Not for them.  
Shifting, his muscles aching against the cold of the small confinement, he managed a semi-sitting position, much as it was possible. Being cold blooded never boded well and the cold weather of upper New York added to it.  
They were moving north. And quickly from the feel of it.  
It was getting colder, windier and he could feel his ears popping.  
Higher, colder.  
"Hurry up, Raph."

OOO

Wind burned when it was cold.  
It burned when it was fast.  
Raphael was experiencing both.  
Icy roads were never a good condition and he supposed he should have waited for backup but he had not time.  
"Leave it to Mikey to get himself into this mess and drag me along with it." The words fell empty on the road and the sound of the roaring engine of his bike was the only echo he heard. "Can't stay outta trouble for ten damn minutes, I swear."  
It was all noise to distract himself but he sure as shell wasn't going to admit that.  
He had every right to be angry. After all, it was Mikeu's fault that he was having to plow through heavy snow, icy winds and shell knew what else in the dead of night. It was Mikey's fault that he got captured in the first place. Cripes, he was supposed to be a ninja!  
Which, he had been.  
Fast.  
Quick.  
Precise.  
Even caught onto the sneaky bastard behind him that had nearly taken Raph's head off with a bat.  
That then took Mikey down with a backhanded blow.  
Shaking his head violently, he ground his teeth and Raph's eyes narrowed on the darkened road ahead. He could smell the faint exhaust of gasoline but that didn't mean he was gaining. It was a sign that someone had passed through here but he had not possible way of knowing if it was the same truck that had his brother.  
This was a pretty hopeless search to be frank. He had lost sight of the truck a while back and was just following their trail up through snowy mountains, hoping that he would stumble upon something to show him the right way. On a path that was full of different tire tracks.  
"Damn it!"  
He considered, for a moment, contacting Leo and Donnie but no. No, this was their mission and everyone knew the unspoken family rule. If Mikey was with you, it was your job to protect him. That was an unspoken but understood rule, an expectation that everyone took on no matter what the situation.  
When you left the Lair, it was something you accepted and if you did not follow and do your job, be ready for a lecture from both Splinter and Leonardo. Not that you generally needed it. Raph never did anyway.  
That was why he hated it. That was why he rolled his eyes and punched and pushed Leo whenever he started in on his 'remain the shadows' bullshit.  
He wasn't an idiot. He knew all too well what was at stake whenever they left and hearing Leo go on and prattle like he was a stupid little child always made his blood boil. He didn't need a reminder.  
Especially when it came to Mikey.  
They'd always had their little duos growing up. Donnie and Leo went together, right as rain, always babbling about books and honor and smarts and who knew what else. Not that Raph disliked that stuff (he was rather fond of some thick horror classics) but it was too still and quiet for him. That was why he and Mikey were always drawn together. Energy for energy, in a sense. Mikey was always raring to go, always ready to strike and jump and run. Much as Raph might have picked on him for a lack of focus, he had a strong likeness for it. You were never bored with Mikey.  
Which was how they were here now.  
Which was why he was plowing through snowdrifts, eyes narrowed, trying to single in a track probably several miles up ahead and not stopping, regardless. He didn't think he would find and track them, he knew for a fact that rain and snow were the absolute devil at erasing small subtle signs and the blazing wind would not be helping.  
Yet, among his distress and anger, he paused, stopped his cycle and stood there, engine roaring amid the weather's onslaught.  
"Remember, this is Mikey." He said it out loud and hearing it lit hope up in his heart against and he continued, though slowly, coming to another stop where the barrage of tire tracks melted into a horrific mess.  
This _was_ Mikey he was chasing, prisoner or not. Unlike his tongue often teased however, he knew his brother. Silly, rambunctious or not, Mikey was a ninja and a damn good one when he put his mind to it. If there was a way to leave a sign, he would.  
That was what he was tracking.  
He knew his brother.  
Maybe they all tried to ignore it or push it aside but the fact of the matter was that if Mikey didn't want to be found, he wouldn't be. If he –did- want to be found, he would give you a sign.  
Setting the cycle aside, Raph leapt to the ground, ignoring the icy burn that the snow brought. Maybe they should have brought more weather prepared clothes but they weren't exactly predicting a chase through upper state New York.  
Crunching snow under his feet, his eyes swarmed over the tire tracks, not really sure what he was searching for but then it settled.  
To anyone else, it would have been a simple smudge among a lot of ice slush. Under most circumstances, he would have thought that as well. This time though, knowing his brother was trying to leave any sign he could, nothing was just coincidence.  
It took a few minutes before his eyes settled on it. A sudden sharp twist in the tire tracks, right on a curve to the left. It was a bellow, like something hard and heavy had suddenly thrust itself into the side of the truck, something deliberately trying to throw it off balance.  
"Okay, so left it is then."

OOO

"You are quite stubborn."  
Mikey lifted his head, as best he could and glared through the searing lights. They were hot, heat lamps, and positioned just enough that he couldn't get a good look at whomever was interrogating him. Didn't matter. He could smell and hear him just fine.  
Guy was a bastard.  
He didn't know how long now. They weren't giving him enough clues. Whoever this guy was, he'd been doing the torture thing for a while. They didn't start small either. Nope, this guy was all about jumping in feet first.  
No permanent injury though, least not thus far. In fact, Mikey had to admit, he was impressed the guy could manage so much pain and discomfort without ever laying a hand on him. It was like evil-scientist-good from his comic books.  
When they'd finally pulled him from that small cage, they'd thrown him into a large room. Nothing in it but large and full of space and loaded with heat spots. After being drug through the snow and through the cold, wet corridors, they had been pure heaven.  
That was the point.  
Now, each day, the lamps had increased in size, increased in heat until there was only one cold spot in the entire room. You had to scurry into the far east corner to reach it. Mikey had resisted at first, knowing all too well that making him seek it out was the point.  
But no food, no water. White walls, white ceiling, white floor. One could only resist so long.  
That corner became his salvation.  
And it was shrinking each day.  
Now, Mister-Personality was back and it looked like that tiny corner that helped him maintain his sanity was on its way out of the door. If he hadn't had such trouble thinking straight, tackling the guy was a good strategy.  
"You put yourself through this." He spoke out again. "Simple answers, that is all I require. Maybe an incentive?"  
One of his goons, whom stood still as statues most of the time (it was downright creepy) shifted and set a pitcher of water in front of him. Dripping down the sides with condensation, five—no, six, ice cubes floating about in the center, bobbling up and down.  
He and his brothers probably looked like that when they swam, come to think of it. Diving deep was their preference but catch them near the surface and the damned shells would always give them away, up and down, up and down.  
His tongue swelled like it was covered in fur in his mouth.  
His body was screaming at him—take it, take it, take it!  
If his skin cracked much more, it would start to bleed and he doubted that this cell, horribly white as it was, reeked of cleanliness. It would be just like this sicko to coat it in some forgotten illness or something.  
Trade his brothers' safety for his own life?  
He hoped the glass cut the bastard's foot when he kicked it into shards.

OOO

Raphael had not stopped.  
He still would not stop.  
He had guessed he'd missed fifteen calls from Leo and Donnie tried to overtake his Shell Cell once and make him answer but he was not relenting. He'd talk to them later, tell them about this mess then but he would get Mikey back first.  
If there was one nice thing about tracking bad guys, once they thought they'd gotten away, they got sloppy. It only took three of Mikey's clues at turns before Raph was picking up on them without help. The jerks had fallen into a pattern: right, right, left, right, right, left. That was how they made their turns, trying to confuse and bewilder but that was not exactly a hard pattern.  
One of 'em must be right handed, Donnie always said that people picked their most dominant hand.  
Sliding his cycle to a stop behind a grove of trees, he dismounted, letting its engine settle to silence before he approached.  
Points where points were due. This was about as middle of nowhere as you could get.  
Guards, but not too many. Pairs it looked like.  
Spot lights. Maybe four of them.  
AK-47s. These people had military connections.  
And parked to the side, behind construction equipment, tanks and other crates of whatever-the-shell they were trading, was the truck that took his brother. He could see a distinct dent on the side where Mikey had probably thrown his weight.  
Smart kid.  
The compound itself didn't look too big actually. More like an old fashion airport that someone with a lot of money decided needed to look like something out of a James Bond film. Only three real possibilities for where Mikey might be.  
So charge in! Get him!  
Oh, so tempting. He'd so love to leave a path of unconscious goons and broken tools on his way in but Raph wanted his brother back in one piece. One piece meant that he couldn't have everyone playing chase the turtle.  
Needed stealth.  
The way of the Ninja. The lifeblood of bushido and-  
"Ah, Shell, get out of my head, Leo." He murmured out loud. "Ya ain't even here and you're still preaching to me."  
Couldn't deny the wisdom of it though. Stealth was something they all knew and had all been taught. Mikey, for all intents and purposes, was the best at it, no matter what Leo might say. Raph was usually used for the door opener.  
Switching it up tonight, apparently.  
Hands to his sai, rubbing his thumbs over the familiar banded leather, Raph closed his eyes a long moment. He hated meditation, same as everyone except Leo did. He couldn't stay still and calm to save his life.  
He and Mikey had their own form of it.  
Become one with the universe was what Sensei always preached. Be still and calm and empty.  
Raph preferred to be one with his energy.  
Make that strength an extension of yourself, that speed an extension of yourself, that raw power…it was all from you and tapping into it didn't have to come from stillness.  
Mikey had taught him that.  
Extremes were what helped you tap into that. For Sensei, for Leo, for Donnie, it was the clearing of the mind, the release of all connections and there only being the plane of existence which you drifted in and out of. Their extreme was nothingness.  
He and Mikey clung to their connections. Emotion. Centeredness. That was their anchor and it was through that emotion that they could push qi, push energy and precise action. Like smooth fuel that sent you on a seamless action, as flawless as cogs in an oiled machine. Mikey used happiness, giddiness, and much as it was cliché, love. That was Mikey—Mister Sunshine all the time. He could likely meet a serial killer and convince him to go out for breakfast.  
Raphael had something else.  
Not anger, though he was sure that was the emotion most people would expect. It was sure what he first tried when he and Mikey were experimenting with their own methods of centered focus.  
It hadn't worked.  
Leave it to Mikey to point out to him that he had to get to the rawness under the anger.  
Not something Raphael liked to do. Anger was familiar. It was something he trusted because even if no one else knew what he would do with his anger, he sure as Shell knew. He knew what damage he could manage and what he would direct his power to do.  
It wasn't enough though. It would fail, sometimes. It would falter, sometimes. Because it wasn't consistent. It wasn't predictable. Not all the time and when you used an energy to power yourself, to direct yourself, it had to be something solid.  
It took some doing but he found his centering force. Mikey never pressed him about it, just smiled whenever he tapped into it and always congratulated him once everything was all over.  
Cursing both aloud and under his breath, Raphael closed his eyes.  
Alright, Hothead. Go to the dark place. Go to that place ya don't like to go.  
The guards didn't even make a sound when they hit the ground.

OOO

"I grow impatient."  
Mikey was growing impatient too. He hated being quiet and that was exactly why he had stayed silent. It got under the skin of this guy. It made him uncomfortable. It didn't give him what he wanted.  
He didn't like this though.  
Normally, this guy (looked like a discount Agent Bishop—were they cousins or something?) hid under his goons or his lights like he was some kind of sophisticated vampire. He'd ventured out from them now and he was tapping the tip of a knife on Mikey's left wrist a little too forcefully.  
"You're left-handed, aren't you?"  
Again, Mikey kept silent and all he gave the guy was a dark glare—channel a little inner Raph—maybe?  
Skin, weary of no water and food, had already chipped and cracked like desert floor in a drought but the knife needed very little force to draw out a small drop of blood.  
"You're similar enough to humans—your stubbornness gave that away—the way you move gave that away…I'd imagine you have some very important tendons and bones in here, especially for someone that utilizes nunchaku."  
Mikey kept his eyes hard but his heart was pounding.  
The man wasn't wrong. There were bones, muscles, tendons in the wrist. Lots of them. For him, it wasn't just nunchaku twirling—it was everything. Cooking, gymnastics, drawing, writing. His wrists were everything he was.  
This bastard was threatening it. He knew he was.  
The blood wasn't painful and neither was the small stab that had brought it out. It was the ideal behind it. The unspoken promise.  
He was digging in a little deeper with it.  
Stay calm, stay calm. Stay calm…  
Fingers, rough on his dried out flesh, traced over the wrist, poking and prodding at the bones, the tensed muscles, the arteries that were no doubt pumping significantly faster, no matter how much he tried to slow his heart.  
"Right here…this is a good spot."  
Tendons, nerves, bones. All of them, right under that knife point.  
"So are we open to talking now?" His breath reeked and it scorched Mikey's face like air out of a hot oven. The gradual bending, back and forth, of that tip. The slow etching into skin, the fiery impulses of nerves starting to fire at the invasion of their private space.  
"I'll ask again. Once more." He pushed, significantly that time and Mikey yelped, just a little at the muscles flexing in resistance and his bones quivering when the muscles tugged on them. "Where is—"  
The eruption of white metal through the man's skull left Mikey speechless for a minute, and he really didn't know what hit him first: the knife falling to the ground, the man slumping a minute later or the warm blood that splattered on his face.  
"Mikey!"  
Blink once, then twice.  
…Of course he came.  
"..Raph."  
It was like coming out of a dream for a minute and he had never been so glad than when his brother turned and kicked the glass bulbs from some of the lights. The sudden dimming was shocking, almost sickening. Had he gotten so used to—  
"C'mon knucklehead, we gotta go. Quiet ain't my strong suit and these goons ain't too bright but even they can't stay dumb to this for too long."  
The tugging on his arm seemed to stumble some semblance of movement into him but the lack of water or anything really only managed to make him stumble forward and slam into his brother's back.  
"Ah, shell, I'm always saving your neck."  
If he hadn't been hurting so much, so thirsty, so…well, so, not-himself, Mikey might have protested being hefted onto his brother's shell like a backpack but when he started running, that slammed a bit of thought back into him.  
"…down right. Side…exit." His voice was raspy, like he had inhaled a collection of moths. He considered coughing, trying to clear it but a half inhale sent shards of pain through his throat and he grasped his throat, tightening his grip with his other hand.  
"Here." A hand reached up and a red cloth was pressed against his bleeding wrist. "Just shut up, Mikey, hold on and we'll get water in you outside."  
"…where you gonna get water from?"  
"They have a reservoir outside with _really_ flimsy construction. I figure the least they can do after being such horrible hosts is give you a drink…"  
Raising an eye ridge but resting his chin on his brother's shoulder, Mikey remarked, "Not in a cup, I'm assuming."  
"You know me. Way too many boy-toys out there to play with compared to a flimsy cup."  
Mikey went quiet, though with a half laugh. It was strained and full of pain and lethargic but a laugh.  
Raphael ignored it.  
He ignored it as he plowed through the gathered forces outside and took a ton of pleasure in erupting that water reservoir all over their little torture camp. He ignored it even as Mikey all but cast himself into the water as it drained off. He ignored it as he left more people than he likely should have to cry for help and not get a response.  
He had to ignore it because he had to keep his focus and keeping his focus meant staying in that dark place.  
Loss.  
Seeing Mikey like he had…hearing him wheeze and moan like he did, seeing his bandana turn a darker red when Mikey had tied it around his wrist. It was all a constant reminder of what he had to lose—his brother, their family as a whole, the security of their lives, his confidant and…  
Afraid. He had to be afraid right now.  
Later, when it was all said and done, Mikey would smile, laugh, call him the hero in shining armor and talk about his cycle being a 'really ugly steed' and Raph would punch him in the arm a little harder than he needed to.  
Once they got back home, Mikey would relish in the attention and would relay his rescue with far more theatrics than there actually was.  
Leo would scold them both but then shake his head and hug them both. Mikey would melt into it, Raph would scowl and protest but allow it.  
Donnie would double check the wounds multiple times even when he knew that they were all capable of patching up simple stabs. He would insist on Gatorade and cool baths for Mikey for several days and Raph would begrudging go and retrieve it.  
Master Splinter would greet them both with an embrace and comment on both their carelessness and ingenuity. Mikey would defend Raph's ninja skills and Raph would make an off hand compliment about his brother's resilience. Splinter would shake his head but smile.  
All that would be later.  
Right now, he needed to remember what was at stake. He needed to remember the pain that would have never left his heart if he had arrived a millisecond later. To see Mikey dead would have been one thing—to see him maimed would be to watch him die over and over each day and without any form of mercy to be had.  
So, as he held Mikey close to his back and charged with his sai, hitting each target he aimed at within a centimeter of where he was settled on, he let that emotion guide him. Let it pump all his fury out in each punch, each kick, each strike.  
Mikey tightened his grip, weak and drained as it was and the fire in Raphael swelled again. He tackled it, confined it, centered it.  
He needed to be afraid right now.  
Mikey.  
He needed to be afraid.  
Mikey.  
He needed to be afraid.  
Mikey.  
He _was_ afraid.  
And only by letting himself be afraid could he have a guarantee that his little brother did not have to be.  
Nothing was ever simple.


End file.
